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Viewpoint

The Little Tin God Of Characterization

As I grow older and as my position hardens in the pantheon of science fiction, I become a tempting target for Young Turks, for those new experimentalists in the field of science fiction who see themselves as the bold visionaries of the future.

I can see their point. I have been around for a long time and I haven't changed much as far as my style and philosophy of writing is concerned. I have my weaknesses and I haven't struggled to correct them and despite those weaknesses and despite the fact that (by Young Turk calculations) I am increasingly out of touch with the changing times, I continue to be successful. That is irritating.

But I wonder, why that, should be. There ought to be some reason for my continuing success. It certainly can't be my incredible good looks and the well-known geniality of my magnetic personality.

To begin with, let's see what they complain about. In a recent issue of a science fiction magazine (not this one), one fiery young literary radical is reported as saying (and I can hear the contempt in his voice), "When you read someone like Asimov, the characters are just interchangeable."

Yes, I've heard that before. I'm deficient in characterization.

So what! I make no special effort to create Dickinson types. I have no enormous interest in having my characters live in human consciousness as though they were so many Prince Hamlets and Huck Finns. My attention is riveted elsewhere and sometimes I do get tired I of being harried and chivvied over the fact that I'm not doing something I'm not trying to do and don't particularly want to do.

Does that sound surprising? It Possible not to attach importance to characterization? To characterization? Surely the purpose of literature is to create believable people and through them to illuminate the human condition.

I dare say! And those writers are anxious to do just that have my permission to do so.

I however, am anxious to write the human condition in a different way -- not through characters, but through ideas. You've heard it said, perhaps, that "Science fiction is a literature of ideas"? Well, I believe it.

In a way, all literature has, or should have, a content of ideas, just as all literature has, or should have, characters.

It's a matter of emphasis, I suppose. I cannot speak for other genres, or for literature generally, but in science fiction, the ideas are of prime importance (in my opinion) should not be sacrificed to the welfare of any other aspect of the story.

Why in science fiction, particularly? Because science fiction differs from all other branches of literature in having events played against a society that is significantly different from our own and yet that is plausible and internally consistent. In most literature, the social background of the story is our own, or, if it is placed in a distant and exotic locale, it would become our own if we were to move to that locale.

If the story is a piece of historical fiction and is therefore set in, the past, then the social background is that of our known past, or the known, past of some other section of the world, and is recognizable as such. If the story is a fantasy, then the social background may have nothing to do with any real society, past or present, but the invented society need not be plausible and it need not even be internally consistent.

To invent a society that is not ours and yet that is plausible and is internally consistent is, in itself, a very difficult thing to do well, as anyone knows who has tried it. To produce that background and, at the same time, to invent an interesting story that can be played against it is even more difficult.

To devise an effective interplay between the two, background and story, is most difficult of all. The social background must be carefully described, for (ideally) it should be as interesting as the story itself is, but that description must not be allowed to get in the way of the story. Similarly, the story must be told briskly but it must not be allowed to obscure the details of the society. To do all that makes good science fiction the hardest writing there is in the world.

My credentials as expert in making that judgment are probably better than almost anyone's in the world. I have written several types of fiction and many types of non-fiction in all lengths and for all sorts of audiences from laymen to experts and from children to educated adults, so when I tell you that nothing is harder to write than good science fiction you are getting that from someone who knows. Nor do I come to that conclusion simply because, through some stroke of bad luck, I just happen to be inproficient at writing good science fiction. I know better than that, and so do you.

Well, then, if someone is going to take the trouble to write science fiction, why should he feel he must bow down to the little tin god of characterization? If he is so anxious to create characters, why not write something that is a lot easier to write than science fiction is, so that he can concentrate all the more effectively on characterization?

No, I'm not saying that, as a matter of principle, you should forget all about characterization if you are writing science fiction. If you can stick some in and make your characters interesting and even unforgettable, great. Why not? But that is not what you should be concentrating on. That is not the thing to which you must sacrifice everything else.

You must instead ask yourself this: Having chosen to write something that is particularly difficult to write, what can I do with it that I can't do with any other type of literature?

Only locating that unique something will suffice to compensate you for your folly in plunging into the morass of science fiction.

And the one thing that science fiction offers the writer, the one thing that no other branch of literature will offer, is its use as a unique vehicle for presenting ideas.

We all know, through experience, how people are likely to react to particular stimuli within our society. Most of us even know how people of existing societies other than our own are likely to react.

But how would people react to particular situations in societies that we know nothing about because they have never existed?

You might think: Who cares?

Yet suppose these societies carry weight with us because we are made to believe they might exist some day? And suppose they have an acceptable texture because they are made internally consistent? And suppose we are made to see that these human reactions to unfamiliar stimuli under unfamiliar conditions somehow bring a fresh illumination to matters of interest in our own society? Would it not then seem to you that a science fiction story was justifying its existence, even though it might be deficient in characterization and in some of the other qualities you have been taught were important in ordinary literature?

But let's consider some examples.

The first science fiction magazine to appear was Amazing Stories with its April, 1926 issue. For a little over two years, that magazine filled its pages mostly with reprints of the already published works of various science fiction writers of the past, notably H. G. Wells, Jules Verne, and Edgar Allan Poe.

The first successful contemporary American writer with an important original science fiction story in an s.f. magazine was Edward Elmer Smith. His first story was a three-part serial entitled "The Skylark of Space," which started in the August, 1928, Amazing.

The instant that first part appeared, the readers of the magazine exploded with joy. At a single bound, E. E. Smith became the beloved "Doc" Smith of the fans (he had a Ph.D.) and the most highly regarded science fiction writer in the magazine field, a post he continued to hold for five years. I began to read science fiction just six months after the serial was concluded, but all I read in the letter columns was "The Skylark of Space" -- "The Skylark of Space" --

Well, read "The Skylark of Space" and judge for yourself as to its qualities. The characterization is rudimentary (though there is an interesting villain), the style is clumsy, the dialogue stilted, the love interest, what there is of it, is so childish it is embarrassing (though Doc improved with time to be sure) -- and yet "The Skylark of Space" was, and deserved to be, a classic.

Why? -- Because it had an important idea.

It was the first science fiction story that dealt with interstellar travel; with flights between the stars, rather than among the planets of our own solar system. That was important in itself, but it was not all. "The Skylark of Space" was a picture of human beings facing the entire starry universe and being unafraid of it. Until then, writers who wished to describe the universe (whether in fact or in fiction) inevitably drew a picture of insignificant humanity on its dust-mote world grovelling in fearful incomprehension of the enormous vastness. Smith, instead, had human beings striding from world to world in growing confidence, calmly mastering the universe and proving themselves superior to it. The readers, faced with something entirely new, loved it.

Did Smith intend to excite his readers with this remarkable vision? I don't know. I never thought to ask him. But he himself had the vision, he himself was excited by it, and it was to revel in that excitement that he wrote the story. That vision and that excitement could go only into a science fiction story. It did not matter that he lacked the skill, or the inclination, perhaps, to put anything else into the story. The vision was enough.

Smith's importance to science fiction was clearly demonstrated by the fact that he quickly attracted imitators, the most important of whom was John W. Campbell, Jr. All that could be done by either Smith, or by his imitators, however, was to make things bigger at each go-round. It was difficult to find new ideas and the "super-science story" gradually became outmoded.

But then came the July, 1934, issue of Wonder Stories which, at that time, was the moribund third of the three science fiction magazines that existed. In it there appeared "A Martian Odyssey" by Stanley G. Weinbaum, and with that story he at once succeeded to the post of the "best science fiction writer" of the magazine world.

There was nothing super-science about "A Martian Odyssey." As the title-suggests, the story simply describes a trip across the Martian terrain by a member of an exploring party there. It has one memorable character and that was Tweel, an ostrich-like Martian, who was undoubtedly intelligent, but whose behavior and thought processes were utterly alien.

Tweel helped make the story a classic, but, again, what was important was an idea. Until then there had been monsters enough in science fiction, but there was nothing about them but hugeness. There were giant reptiles, giant ants, giant amoebas. There was no suggestion of fitness to an environment; they merely existed in a vacuum in order to threaten the heroes of the story.

Weinbaum, on the other hand, not only described Martian life-forms but fit them into their world. He talked about how they lived. He was the first to give thought not to alien life by itself but to an alien ecology. Again, the readers were exalted by the new vision and at once elevated story and author to the heights. Admittedly, it was better written than most science fiction stories of the time, but not enough so to matter. It was the idea that counted.

Again, there was a virtual explosion of imitators, of whom the most important were Arthur K. Barnes and Henry Kuttner. Weinbaum himself died, tragically, of cancer, only a year and a half after he had burst on the scene, and the alien ecology stories gradually trailed off as the idea ran its course.

Meanwhile, John W. Campbell, Jr., was abandoning the super-science story and beginning to write a whole series of stories under the pseudonym of Don A. Stuart; stories which were essentially low-key, but which always had some novel idea that readers were not expecting. The first of these was "Twilight" in the November, 1934, Astounding, which depicted the earth of the far future in which the machines were perfect but humanity had degenerated. Then, in the June, 1937, Astounding, he reversed that and in "Forgetfulness" pictured the earth in which the machines were perfect but humanity had progressed far beyond them and needed them no longer.

When he became editor of Astounding in 1938, Campbell decided to make the idea the thing. Stories, he decided, were to have verisimilitude. Engineers would act like engineers, scientists like scientists, people like people. What would make the science fiction story would be not the style, not colossality, but problems and solutions of the future -- solutions that arose out of an idea.

He gathered writers from among the eager young readers who came to visit him, and from among those who sent in manuscripts; and those who showed any promise at all, he challenged with ideas. The first "Campbell writer" who became a first magnitude star at once was A. E. van Vogt, whose first story, "Black Destroyer," appearing in July, 1939, dealt with a "monster" who wasn't just a huge mass of beef, but who was a menace that was intelligent enough to test the human protagonists to the full. The idea of a worthy menace was delightful.

Then in the very next issue, that of August, 1939, appeared "Lifeline," the first story of Robert A. Heinlein. He presented the idea of down-to-earth "fortune-telling"; the picture of each human being as a long four-dimensional pink worm, with probes running along the time axis to tell what was happening. It was fascinating and against-one's-will convincing.

A. E. Van Vogt gradually faded, but Heinlein did not. He at once succeeded to the post of "best science fiction writer," and imitators began at once to follow in his footsteps. I, myself, had no hesitation in trying to study his technique and follow it.

To many, Heinlein is still "the best" four and a half decades later. He was the first writer to be selected for the "Grand Master" award by the Science Fiction Writers of America.

And me? What about me?

I, too, was a Campbell writer. My first story in Astounding appeared in the July, 1939, issue, right along with "Black Destroyer." It was "Trends" and Campbell accepted it not because of its style or characterization (it was badly deficient in both) but because it had an unusual idea that interested him. It was the idea of social resistance to the very concept of space flight (something which eventually actually came to pass). He had never seen it before and it was not even something he had suggested to me. He took the story on the strength of that and it was enough to make him decide not to let go of me.

I, however, did not spring to the moon in a single leap. I wrote and published for a little over two years without much notice being taken of me. Then in the September, 1941, Astounding, there appeared "Nightfall," and suddenly I began to rise in the ranks. And what it did have was an idea, one which, I have always admitted, Campbell gave me. (However, to use a football metaphor, all he did was hand me the ball; I had to run with it, and score the touchdown.)

The idea was simply the reverse of Doc Smith's. The stars, which all through human history, had seemed beautiful and benevolent to humanity and which had symbolized all that was good and heavenly (think of the Star of Bethlehem) were suddenly revealed as dangerous and deadly; the mere sight was enough to drive intelligent beings insane. (And, indeed, twenty years after the story first appeared, astronomers began to discover that the universe and its starry host were indeed far more dangerous than had ever been dreamed of.)

For over forty years that story, written only moderately well, has continued to seize the imagination of new readers. It holds the same spell over kids today, even though their fathers weren't yet born when I wrote it. -- Because of the idea.

At about the same time I had three more ideas of first-class importance, each one of which I exploited to the full. They were 1) the all-human galaxy, 2) psychohistory, and (most important) 3) the Three Laws of Robotics,

It was these ideas and the popularity of the stories that contained them (my "robot series" and my "Foundation series"), and not any superlative writing skills I had, that finally made me one of the Big Three along with Robert Heinlein and Arthur Clarke and kept me there for forty years. I have had other ideas since, of course, notably in my stories "The Last Question" and "The Ugly Little Boy," but the fact is that for the most part I have been ceaselessly mining the mother-lodes I had uncovered by the time I was 22 years old.

Yes, science fiction is a literature of ideas. It is because I realized this early on (thanks to Campbell -- everything is thanks to Campbell) and never let myself forget it, that I became successful and continued to be successful no matter how the field changed about me.

But wait! Surely you can have terrific characterization and a wonderfully poetic style along with the idea. These things, after all, are not mutually exclusive.

Yes, indeed. There's no reason you can't have it all. And if you've got a story with a great idea, that is also well-written, and has unforgettable characters, please send it right to this magazine now, and the beauteous Shawna will not only see to it that you are sent a handsome check but she will stand ready to kiss you on your forehead.

Even I have managed to write some emotionally effective prose, and to create some decently defined characters. (I'm thinking of "The Ugly Little Boy" and "The Bicentennial Man" and, especially, the middle part of my novel The Gods Themselves.)

I do it when I can, but I've got my limits, and if I have to settle for less than 100 percent, I just make sure I remember where the science fictional bottom line is. Not characterization, not style, not poetic metaphor -- but idea.

Anything else, I will skimp on if I have to. Not idea.